If you have ever uttered this phrase or found yourself whining along those lines, it is deeply understandable. There are a lot of messages that we give ourselves and pick up around us that invalidate the study of music, poetry, dance, language, history, comparative literature, and the whole spectrum of liberal and fine arts majors.

So, start by reading yet another amazingly helpful and concise posting by Kathy Hansen at QuintCareers.com. If you aren’t already a fan of QuintCareers, let me introduce you. I’ve followed them since 1998 when I was on the job market after grad school in English and found the content refreshing, direct, and useful. Really, truly everything career from “I’m in high school and thinking about….” to “I’m a senior executive” to everything in between and beyond. Start there and it’ll lead your job search journey along to many great resources, ideas, and practices.

Go now… read what she has to say about the amazing value of owning your degree. It’s SO important in finding a job and, really in all of life… If YOU can’t convince yourself of being likable, valuable, hirable… Well, it’s going to be really tough sell to others.

If it’s helpful, learning to like yourself and value what is special about you IS something you can learn. Undeniably, it *really* helps to have great nurturing parents who’ve told you repeatedly how amazing, gifted, talented, and full of potential you are while setting clear supportive boundaries in developmentally appropriate ways. But…..given that didn’t happen for most of us and even those that it did… well, trust me. Not even the coolest parents are perfect. We all have issues.

And that’s where I really want to add something to Kathy’s great list of ways to value–and,realize the value of liberal or fine arts degrees--and, it honestly might be much clearer to the fine arts majors than it is to those of us in the humanities, but PEOPLE are the most central and effective resource on a job search. Liberal arts includes the humanities after all!

You might have heard people say, often with a snicker… that “it’s not WHAT you know, it’s WHO you know?”

Well, I’d argue it’s really, equally and crucially, both.

Who you know gives you a chance to develop what you know

Who you know gives you an opportunity to demonstrate what you know (and what you don’t)

Who you know gives you a chance to increase who ELSE you might talk with about resources

What you know can bring positive attention from who you know (and perhaps even introduce you to those you’d like to know!)

What you know can connect you to others who share those interests

What you know can change your perspective on who you know

Who you know is only part of the recipe of success. If you ONLY know people and you are a complete idiot (and we all could possibly point to someone like this in our history?), you can rise quite far. That’s true. But you are still a complete idiot and at some point the emperor has no clothes and falls in disgrace.

What you know is only part of the recipe of success. If you ONLY know facts and figures, information without social context and human connection is of limited use. You can be very smart, but you need other humans to be able to put that information to work.

Connecting who and what through learning is optimal networking. Intentionally setting out to learn from those around you through Informational Interviewing and less formal conversations too about what others are doing, how they got there, where they got started, when they learned some of their biggest lessons, and especially who else they would suggest you speak with in your mission.

Building community is crucial. I’m not talking about fake networking of the worst most cheesy bad car salesman type. I’m talking about being human. Connect with other humans around what you want to learn about the world. More on this in the future…

Sending fabulous energy as you connect with people around passionate ideas!

If you are thinking about graduate school, please read the post at Grad Pit Stop before you do anything else.

Moving forward without writing things down, weighing pro’s and con’s, talking it through with a number of people you respect, and thinking that you will be fine is not a plan. I say this because I didn’t do these things and it would mean a lot to me if others could learn from my mistakes.

I headed off to graduate school because it seemed like the next logical option without any formal or informal examination of my various broad reaching career options. I loved studying, reading, writing, and discussing ideas along a broad range of deeply interrelated subject matter. My faculty, who were great mentors and supporters, thought it would be a great option.

It wasn’t until I was in graduate school and looking more seriously ahead at a field replete with ABD-ghosts broken and floating lecturers teaching night and weekend classes, cobbling together a meager income from several different adjunct positions all over the region, that I started to see with greater clarity that the field I thought was so wonderful had a rusty carcass at its core. The dream of making tenure by 30 was mythic for almost any person, even department stars.

There were quite simply too many implausible odds on writing one of two published books a year and scoring a tenure-track position at even the most remote a college, much less a top-tier university. Unless I was on a holy mission to prove something or another, it just didn’t seem worth it to continue into the Ph.D. program.

When I started I was on a mission. But then I discovered that my mission wasn’t built on pure desire to know, it was built and driven principle on a genuine desire to prove myself as “good enough.” This discovery was piercing.

Like many transformational moments it was deflating, dispiriting, and fraught with despair at the same time it was the foundation of discovering the path to my self. I totally admit that at the time it was happening, I didn’t see the opportunities as much as I saw the devastation. It’s only in retrospect that I see how it was all meant to be.

So, I share this with you so that you might be much clearer on your mission, more conscious of actual field realities, and more fully engaged in guided career exploration.

As you think options through, I really want to underline the importance of writing it down.

Take out blank paper and engage in brainstorming. If you have questions or stray thoughts or ideas that keep spinning in your mind… it’s important to the process to engage them through or they will just keep floating in your brain interfering with productivity and focus.

So, here are some options:

sometimes when I’m trying to figure out an idea it helps to draw. I might draw circles that overlap and think about what one thing related to another would make…. sometimes it’s about relationship and sometimes it’s about proportion. often it is both.

sometimes it helps to make lists. here are some questions I ask myself and clients:

what are as many of my options (even silly or stupid ones) as I can think of?

what would someone I like and trust think or say?

what are the costs/benefits of each idea I’m considering?

what’s another perspective I could choose?

how important will this be in 5-10 years?

sometimes it helps to just to start typing or writing around the idea… no one else ever has to see what you write, but just getting the ideas out there and following where them gets you unstuck.

You see, if you only think about things or “I have it ALLLLLLL up here” is your philosophy, think again. Your brain can’t get traction on ideas and fully process them if all you do is process things internally.

To grow, change, and fully engage in exploring your options, it’s very important that you physically get them outside of yourself, so you can truly visualize, prioritize, and organize. Here are some key brainstorming options:

talking it over with a supportive friend, mentor, or coach.

drawing

free-writing

blogging

list-making

using pictures or clippings, collage with them to create a vision board

So, explore your options….using whichever tools work best for you. If you want more ideas, just ask.

If you’ve been reading along in my series on going to graduate school, you might at some point in the process get overwhelmed. That’s totally normal.

If it’s helpful, I get overwhelmed as much as the next person. Thinking about life… career options… relationships… from the big picture to the smallest pixel… there are moments when it can all become too much.

From questioning where one might to live, work, study, or raise a family? to considering what others might think? how it might work? or even what might happen if…? Sometimes, it can be good to pause, take a minute to breathe, and consider the larger purpose of why we are heading off to do something.

Just like anyone, I can get caught up in exploring the enormity of options, unknown variables, quantity of elements to coordinate, etc…that it’s just a seemingly never-ending pointless laundry list of tasks and duties and responsibilities…and it’s at that moment, especially if I find myself discouraged, frustrated, or wanting to just quit, one of the most powerful things I’ve found I can do for myself and others is to ask “What’s the Point?”

Try it. Take a deeeeeeep to-the-belly-kind-of-breathe…hold in and sloooowwwwwlyyy–as slowly as you possibly can– but evenly…let your breath out. Gather your focus in doing so. Slow your heart rate by slowly breathing in and out. Ask yourself: “What’s the Point?”

When I’m asking “What’s the Point?” it’s not typically in a despairingly dramatic “ohhhhhh woe is me….what is the point of living…” while swooning, gnashing my teeth, and falling on my heroic but trite sword of death, while whining that “it’s not faaaairrrr.” Not typically. but you know everyone has their moments. 😉

More helpful in asking “What’s the Point”, I’ve found, is that it calls for a focus on purpose or mission. In Breaking the Rules, A Visionary’s Guide to Effortless High Performance, Kurt Wright examines the difference between a goal and a purpose. For example, going to graduate school or getting a job is a goal. It is a specific (albeit large) task that can be accomplished. Goals are great. But, a goal without a reason is hollow, demotivating, and unlikely to be successful.

Consider any time someone orders you to do something. It really typically doesn’t matter who it is doing the ordering: it could be your mom, your boss, your significant other or roommate; it could even be yourself, but almost every time, our natural response is “Why?” Often that “why” question is a way to resist…or contest power…but that’s deeply understandable. Anytime we commit our time, energy, and resources to a task, it it is more helpful to know why we are doing so, than to simply march forward with a 1000-yard stare into meaningless action.

So, in someways whenever we get overwhelmed, frustrated, or otherwise feeling grumpy about something, it can be useful to take a moment to consider that core “Why” questions because the answer is central to providing a motivating reason to each goal. Providing context and purpose is key to swift action and to meaningful results.

“What is the Point?” is another way of asking “Why?’ and gets at the central motivating reason or purpose of the goal. Knowing the purpose of a goal is much more likely to move me into action. Simply telling myself “I have to do this or that” makes me actually resist or procrastinate action. When, we know why we are doing something, we have the power of choice.

Yet, if it’s helpful for me to share, sometimes that all important “why?” question can simply be too confrontational, too personal, too combative, or too philosophical to be helpful in asking ourselves and others. It’s a crucially important question to ask, but because it’s the most core question,it can be too much for us to address, especially at stressful moments in life.

For example, even people close to us…even when we mean no confrontation…even when we ask a simple curious “so, why’d you park out front, honey?”…and it’s not a deep philosophical issue that requires soul searching…people can snap at you when you ask “why?”

So, here are ways to ask “why” in more effective frames:

What’s the larger mission? What’s the central purpose?

Where does the mission point?

How does the larger purpose or mission frame options?

When does the mission connect?

Who benefits?

Ask yourself these questions at any point along the way. Asking and answering these can keep you going, as well as keep you focused and motivated.

It can also be a great tool in crisis.

So, if you haven’t yet articulated a specific mission and find yourself adrift, unfocused or unmotivated, this can be a great jump start.

Or, if you at one point were on a mission and then started to forget to keep checking in with your mission and begin to get frustrated and overwhelmed, this can knock you out of your rut.

Or perhaps like all of us, even when you are clear on a mission, certain days and experiences are just hell. Being able to not get stuck there is key.

Asking great questions, creating mission statements, or reciting inspiring quotations and the like are a powerful tools in controlling our thoughts, beliefs, motivations, actions, and are a few of the key elements of transforming our lives on our terms.

Well, any guesses on the number one reason why people get hired? I’ve been part of countless hire situations and the conversations about hiring always begins on things like degrees, experience, and skills. But, it ends on like.

It’s not that degrees, experience, and skills aren’t important. They are. They put you in the pipeline as a qualified applicant. The thing that will move you to “you’re hired” is the degree to which you are perceived as a “good fit” for the organization.

There always comes a moment in the hire process when the manager, recruiter, committee, or whomever is making the decision…and they decide who they like. It can happen as they talk through the process or it can happen because they know the person who referred the candidate or because the candidate was already known by the company, but even when that’s not the case, there is moment when someone finally says, “I really liked her” or “He really connected with those on the team.” It’s the moment when of all the candidates it could be, there is one that really is the one you can imagine sitting next to… imagine giving the keys or password to… imagine letting loose with clients … or even just sitting in a meeting and not wanting to smack! 🙂

And, ultimately, that is the candidate who will get the job…. and that is a very good thing. Liking those we work with is really key to productivity, profit, and tapping potential. Not liking those we work with is costly, draining, and rife with turf wars. Not liking can destroy departments and whole organizations from the inside out. None of us need more of that!

So, recognize and celebrate the power of like! It not only will drive your career but also enrich your life.

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out to another is to risk exposing your true self. To place your ideas, your dreams, before the crowd, is to risk their loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To hope is to risk despair. To try is to risk failure. But risks need to be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.

The person who risks nothing does nothing, has nothing, is nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love…live. Chained by his beliefs, he is a slave; he has forfeited freedom. Only a person who risks is free. – Edwin Land (Riffenbary, 2007, p. 18).

Or, that’s the saying…but if you are driving a car, do you wait until it’s broke before you grab the steering wheel?

So, what if that is true of our lives as well? What would that mean?

Does it really have to be broken before we are willing to consider making changes? to grow? to imagine moving from functional to optimal?

What if, instead, we are like my remote control. It’s a perfectly good remote control. It turns the TV on and off. The volume and channels up and down. Everything. It totally is great as a remote control. There is not one thing that’s wrong with it.

But, what if it could find itself when I lose it? It could maybe make a noise or something? Wouldn’t that be so cool?